Ben And Arthur [2002]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Knowing our and every bad movie enthusiast's passion for Tommy Wiseau's 2003 classic "The Room", it is difficult, impossible even, to resist the allure of a movie that Adam referred to simply as "The Gay Room" before specifing that the characters, not the room itself, were gay. From the opening credits we were struck by the fact that the technical quality was not up to "The Room"'s standards and clearly didn't have "The Room"'s confusing $6 million dollar budget but that pretty much every componant of the movie including directing, writing, producing, and acting included Sam Mraovich or someone with the same last name. This is the most personal of personal stories.

Ben and Arthur have been together three years and want to get married in Hawaii where gay marriage has just been legalized. However, before they can the law is overtured and Arthur finds out that Ben has been married to a woman for the past five years and she refuses to get a divorce. In spite of this, Ben and Arthur get married in Vermont (which is apparently full of palm trees, a fact this room full of New Englanders could not stop laughing about). The wife tries to kill Ben and he takes the gun and everything is fine. Meanwhile, after some minor subplot involving Ben and Arthur quitting their terrible restaurant jobs to get better jobs as a nurse and sex shop owner respectively, Arthur tries to get on better terms with his crazy religious brother Victor who thinks being gay is a sin in spite of the fact that he pings all the gaydars himself. Victor hires an investigator in a subplot that goes nowhere and then murders Ben and Arthur's lawyer who was trying to get their marriage recognized in the state of California. After a dinner of poptarts at Victor's that was supposed to be a truce, Victor somehow manages to get even crazier, leaving a "holy water recipe" on their door and then deciding to kill them after learning that the church is kicking him out for his gayness by association. Arthur meanwhile goes to the priest who kicked out his brother and set him on fire, proving that while gayness may not run in the family, insanity sure does. The final showdown happens when Victor goes to Ben and Arthur's apartment, kills Ben, and then drugs Arthur so he can baptise him in the bathtub. Arthur wakes up, grabs Ben's wife's gun, hits on his brother in the creepiest turn of events, and then both end up killing each other. Roll credits with "Pachelbel's Canon" playing you out.

This movie is a mess in every wonderful sense. The acting is weak and campy, the dialogue is mostly odd or full of unnessecary swearing fits, it's full of plot holes, every character is reprehensible to varying degrees, the whole premise is over-the-top and kind of offensive to both gay people and religious people, and it's just so, so low budget. The church was one of our favorite set pieces including a bad painting of Jesus tacked to the wall, a cardboard cross illuminated by a flashlight, and walls that didn't even connect in the corners. At one point the bed in Ben and Arthur's apartment had a different comforter every time it cut back, totaling three linen changes in one night. And Keith definitely saw a mic in the corner of a shot. Does it live up to the title of "The Gay Room"? We were all in agreement that there were enough similarities to justify the title and it's definitely a worthwhile watch.

Quotes:
Victor: "My brother is planning on marrying a man. I need to know his next move."
Detective: "I think what you're doing is morally wrong."

(to her husband) "Remember me?"

Spoon Rating: 8.5

Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was pretty good."

A Talking Cat!?! [2013]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

I'm pretty sure there is no way to read the title of this movie without sounding goofy. Perhaps appropriately for the family fun we were about to endure, we started off our evening with a pre-show of an old training video for Game Crazy where a white lady named Zelda Scott utilized all the hip slang of the early 00s. It was deeply awkward, as was the entirity of our feature presentation that followed. The film was directed by a guy  who has made a lot of movies but seems to split is time between family films and horror films, all shot in the same location with similar looking actors, and all of them seeming to suggest that perhaps this man missed his calling as a porn director because that's really the kind of quality and vibe we're dealing with. It seems likely that we will watch another of his films in the future.

In a land of totally indeterminate geography (there are frequent establishing shots that contradictorarily suggest we are in the mountains, at the beach, near a lake, near a river, and in both tropical and temperate climates), a seemingly homosexual dad and son live in their fancy but tackily decorated mansion. The dad is a retired computer mogul and the son is trying to impress the popular girl. In another house nearby with confusing family dynamics, a mom who is trying to make ends meet lives with her app programer daughter who has dreams of getting rich off her product and her son who thinks he's no good at anything. For some reason the mom discourages the daughter from going to college and encourages the son to do things that he is unsure about while not acknowledging the skills he has. In the area, a cat, who is Eric Roberts recording dialogue in 15 minutes, wanders between these people, giving each a piece of advice because he can only speak to each person once. This interferance leads to the dad meeting the mom, the daughter meeting the dad who ends up wanting to help her develop her app, and the sons meeting and confusingly not falling in love even though they have a lot of chemistry and go swimming together. Seriously, the pool scenes were a gay porno waiting to happen and we were all kind of sad when they instead had the son sort of get together with the popular girl. After, the cat gets hit by a car and they need to find his magic collar to save him. So they do. And everyone's happy expect the son who thinks he isn't good at anything because his boyfriend got stolen by the chick who hates books. Lame.

This movie is hilarious. Aside from the aforementioned establishing shots, the awkward acting, and the thin premise, there's even more low quality fun to be had. The laser pointer that was used to direct the cat is visible in multiple shots and the animation to make the cat talk is pre-"Jingle Cats" quality with its mouth looking like a black void. The music is all public domain, mostly "La Cucaracha", and made with a Casio keyboard that involved liberal use of the slide whistle, Adam's most hated instrument. The app the girl creates involves scanning all your clothes so it can customize outfits which is not a bad idea although Cher Horowitz had the same program in "Clueless" in 1995 and the "scanner" is actually just a booklight. Also, check out this sweet cat torniquet and note that this is not the same cat on the movie poster above:

Quotes:
"I'm such a good friend."

"Is she in trouble?"
"Yes."
"Sweet."

Spoon Rating: 8

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good. I liked it."

The Humanoid [1979]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last week we watched a movie that was a parody of crappy Italian remakes of popular movies. Today, we watched an actual crappy Italian remake of "Star Wars" made only two years after "A New Hope" was released. While the plot has relatively little to do with "Star Wars", the visuals and costuming copies are so blatant, legal action really could have been taken. It features a cast of no ones, but it does have a really tall guy who played a James Bond villain in "Moonraker" and the music was composed by Ennio Morricone, most well known for his work with Sergio Leone and often featured in Tarantino films, who probably had a weekend to spare to throw together some incongruously happy synth scores for the fight scenes.

Sarah was not around to explain the plot and the Wikipedia page has nothing in the way of a summary so here's my best shot at explaining. Darth Helmet, actually named Graal which sounds like a really lazy D&D name, and an evil scientist turn a really tall rouge pilot into humanoid with intentions of creating ana army of humanoids. A humanoid as far as we can tell is a super strong and nigh invulnerable being that just wants to kill for its master. Meanwhile, Darth Helmet's girlfriend, Helmet Hair, is bleeding young girls to stay young looking like she's Countess Bathroy but this has relatively little to do with the main plot. The humanoid abandons his robot dog and walks around Tatooine, eventually stumbling upon a teacher and her genius child student who has his own cult. They teach him about the meaning of friendship so he won't kill them. Then they team up with the good guys to try to stop the bad guys. Everything works out. The genius kid joins his cult members on another plane or something and the teacher, pilot, and "hero" settle down in a triad relationship with their Robodog. Probably.

The plot is conventional and sloppy, the acting of the so-called hero is at least two Kevin Costners on the wooden scale, footage is reused with reckless abandon, and a lot of the dialogue is just silly but nothing can really top all the obvious "Star Wars" thief. The titles use the same opening crawl, the first shot is a direct replication, the pilot's ship looks like a lazy attempt at a Millenium Falcon, it takes place heavily on a desert planet, and the costumes are just copies of "Star Wars" costumes made more ridiculous. The villain wears a huge black helmet with leather straps over his face like an S&M interpertation of Rick Moranis in "Spaceballs", the villains look like World War II generals in black, and the good guys wear flight suits and interpertations of martial arts uniforms. You're probably just better off watching a "Star Wars" movie. Unless it's the prequels. Then maybe, you should watch this and laugh.

Quotes:
"We are approaching gravity."

"Kid, you gotta be outta your gravity zone."

"Well I'll be disintigrated!"

"Nothing can stop me now, princely hero!"

Spoon Rating: 7.5

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good."

Italian Spiderman [2007]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

We try to avoid comedies. Mainly this is because if a movie falls under the blanket of "comedy" and "bad movie", that generally means that the movie simply fails as a comedy. Sure it might have some of the bad film making and script moments of fun bad movies but it is more often painful. We also try to avoid movies that are intentional parodies of bad movies because they are usually too self aware to be funny in the way that bad movies are. Here we have found an exception.

This is an Australian production that is a parody of bad foreign remakes of popular films and it's actually hilarious. It's Adam West's "Batman" meets James Bond starring Nacho Libre and set in Italy in the 60s. Nothing about it resembles "Spiderman" aside from the fact that the main character who has a weaponized moustache and mostly just goes around punching people has a spider on his shirt. Explaining the plot is ultimately useless because it's mostly nonesense but I can tell you some reasons to watch it. There's a surf contest with attack penguins. There's a guy who looks like young Weird Al who points at stuff in shock. There's all the coolness of the 60s mod vibe but everyone's a flailing idiot. Any, hey, t's less than 40 minutes of your life wasted if you don't have fun. But you probably will.

Quotes:
"Respect women!"
"Thank you, Italian Spiderman!"
"Shut your mouth, pussycat, and make me a macchiato, pronto!"

"I summon penguins!"

Spoon Rating: 9.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was better!"

Gayniggers From Outer Space [1992]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Kay is going on a trip to Copenhagen soon and has been on a streak of watching Danish movies in preparation (especially Danish movies that aren't by Lars Von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn since she's seen most of those). So imagine the joy felt upon realizing that one of the movies Adam picked for the night is by a Danish director and even has a random advertisment for Carlsberg, "the best beer in the universe," before the title even shows! And with a title like "Gayniggers From Outer Space", we already knew there was no way this wasn't going to be . . . something.

Coming in at less than a half hour, there's not an overwhelming amount of plot to this movie. A bunch of black, gay aliens with punny names like General B. Dick from a planet of only black, gay aliens called planet Anus are traveling through space when they come across Earth, a planet that has women on it. They decide this is a problem so they go country by country, sending down a representative to eliminate all the women from each place (even though he usually only kills one or two), thereby freeing the men. Each primer on the countries is full of racial stereotypes and the men they beam down to are always being "oppressed" by the woman, usually by being made to do housework or something, and somehow they are all perfectly happy to live in a gay society. In the end, one of the aliens turns himself into a white dude to go down and be the ambassador to the newly women-free planet, which is also drenched in unfortunate implications really. 

This movie is sexist, racist, made with only the cheapest materials, with the laziest acting and special effects . . . and it's kinda funny. It's not a laugh-a-minute movie and you'll definitely raise your eyebrows before chuckling with a bit of shame but as long as you don't take it or yourself seriously, it's an amusing way to spend a half hour. 

Here are some things we learned:

Spoon Rating: 5.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "What's to think?"

Fire Maidens From Outer Space [1956]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Hey! Do you like fiercely patriarchal societies and nonsense science?Hm, you don't? But how about if they're IN SPACE? Yeah, I didn't think so. Unfortunately, even with such a promising title that immediately begs an answer to the question, "What exactly is a fire maiden," this movie failed to deliver in a lot of ways and felt much longer than its hour run time.

In a time period that is either some time in the future or the 1950s, a bunch of space-suitless scientists at desks have a very casual journey to one of Jupitar's moons where they had heard a rumor that life could be brewing there. Turns out the air is breathable, gravity is the same, space is loud, and all the space natives speak English. How conventient! The head scientist sees a woman in a very short skirt get attacked by a beast and then she takes him to her leader: the only man in the community. It turns out they, as well as the other 15 girls there, are descendents of survivors of Atlantis who had left Earth thinking that the entire planet was going to sink into nothing. Sure. Then the girl is given to the scientist as a wife-present. The leader wants to use the scientists to help kill the beast who is kind of keeping them captive and probably killed the rest of the society. They do. At one point the main girl is thought to be going against the community after she drugs the leader and they dance around her before a ritualistic burning that gets stopped by the scientists. This is the only explanation we have for, "what exactly is a fire maiden." With the beast gone, the scientists leave with the main girl but promise the other maidens that they will return . . . with HUSBANDS! It's all a girl wants, really.

This movie is sloppy in a way that is only funny in small isolated moments. Once you are done laughing about the chill scientists with their lack of science and the fact that the whole movie has a giant single spot of lighting right in the middle of the frame that shows they thought they didn't need a lighting person, the fun is pretty much over. Instead you're just left with questions like "why didn't the 16 girls overthrow their leader when they clearly could take him?" "how did one man-sized beast wipe out a whole civilization that probably knew a thing or two about weapons?" and "is there a way this movie could have included more fire to justify its title?" We were hoping the maidens might be on fire or have fire powers or even just worship a fire god (they seem to worship Aphrodite) but alas, no.

Quotes:
"We're here to explore, not to get involved in something we know nothing about."

"Hold your fire. We'll try to scare him away." [shoots gun]

"Beautiful! Gorgeous! A speciman that requires the most extensive research program!"

Spoon Rating: 2